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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778284">The Letter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHuggamugCafe/pseuds/TheHuggamugCafe'>TheHuggamugCafe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fools And Corpses, All [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Darkest Dungeon (Video Game), Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>As much as you and I hate it people are absolutely going to die, Gen, Other Additional Tags To Be Added As Series Progresses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:27:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,989</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25778284</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHuggamugCafe/pseuds/TheHuggamugCafe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If only you never received that thrice-damned letter.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Other Relationship Tags to Be Added</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Fools And Corpses, All [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870117</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Letter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My first-ever Darkest Dungeon musing, I am so eager to get this malicious party started!</p><p>Please note that the rating and tags are subject to change, as the series progresses.</p><p>Feedback and constrictive criticism is appreciated.</p><p>I do not own Darkest Dungeon; full rights go to Red Hook. </p><p>I also do not own Hazbin Hotel; Vivziepop does.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>“</em>Milady!” You remember your family’s wizened caretaker bursting through the weathered door of the brick house you’ve happily called “home” for the past decade or so, haggard and gasping for breath. You remember ogling the aged, wild-eyed man like he was suddenly overcome with a sickness that made him act like a sanitarium patient, wondering what rattled him so. “Your venerable grandfather, may the gods have mercy on his eternal soul, he has…! He has—!”</p><p>You remember seeing that damned family sigil stamped onto the letter clasped in the sweaty, trembling hand of the caretaker, sealing it closed and at first glance, a sense of dread washed over you like a tsunami. You <em> knew </em> that it was intended for no one’s eyes but yours. “He has gone to the great beyond! Before he departed he entrusted this letter to me, to be read by no other soul but you. Please, milady, it is of the utmost importance for you to read your grandfather’s final testament!”</p><p>The dread that filled you then was nothing compared to the terror that grips you as you carefully pull the sealed flap open, removing your grandfather’s dying words with a crisp shuffle of parchment.</p><p>
  <em>“Ruin has come to our family…”</em>
</p><p>In hindsight, you suppose you couldn’t be necessarily faulted for feeling annoyed, for having this twist of fate being dropped so unceremoniously into your lap. And your only fault is being the sole surviving heiress to a family name that was worth less than the dirt crusted to your heels, and inheriting some misbegotten Hamlet that nobody can hope to rightfully remember, left to rot in the shadows of rumour and whispered of only while nursing a pint of ale. You, the sole heiress, are also currently in possession of an estate that has, evidently, weathered countless storms and the natural passing of the seasons, worn down only by a mistress nobody can escape: time.</p><p>
  <em>“You remember our venerable home, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.”</em>
</p><p>Oh if only you knew how to make contact with your grandfather’s spirit, and tell him that you wished you could forget all about those moments you spent on the family estate. Moments that were as wonderful as they were terrible. Moments that as a child you spent, and with a degree of family pride that you still begrudgingly carried even now, smiling and pretending all was well. Moments that a much younger, innocent you stared out at the world with the lens only a gullible, sheltered little girl can proudly boast of having.</p><p>You were innocent. You were foolish. You were a little girl helplessly thrown into the family pit filled to the brim with glittering gold, fancy shawls, shiny trinkets and jewels the common folk can only dream of. You were a child, left vulnerable to the well-practised politeness of your relatives, expected to play by the rules to avoid embarrassing the head of the family: your grandfather.</p><p>
  <em>“I lived all my years in that ancient, rumour-shadowed manor… Fattened by decadence and luxury.”</em>
</p><p>As much as you did, for a time. Until weeks shy of your tenth birthday, when your parents wished to relocate elsewhere. You couldn’t—<em>still</em> didn’t, were you an honest woman—understand your parents’ sudden need to leave the home they had known all their years. The mansion where they had met each other; the mansion where you had been born. The manor that was bathed in silhouette as much as it was mired in rumours, of which there was no short supply of one nor the other.</p><p>
  <em>“And yet, I began to tire of conventional extravagance. Singular, unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power.”</em>
</p><p>Of course there were rumours; you recall the people living in the Hamlet loving their gossip as the tavern-goers adored their beer. You remember asking the adults about the Hamlet dwellers’ suspicion about your family and how they obtained their fortune, but you may as well have been talking to thin air: they never replied to your questioning doe eyes; they never satiated your nagging thirst for answers.</p><p>
  <em>“With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh grandfather, you poor, shameless fool. What have you done?</em>
</p><p>You can’t help yourself from thinking such a thing, not daring to speak it aloud; you don’t want to upset the caretaker, still wringing his hands and muttering to himself while idling near the stone hearth, and the crackling fire it contained. It isn’t good to disrespect the dead, especially if the departed “poor, shameless fool” is your grandfather.</p><p><em> What</em>, you quietly ask yourself, had possessed your grandfather to seek it out? What are these “long buried secrets” he speaks of in his will that he worked so tirelessly for, going so far as to waste all of the family wealth on pursuing it relentlessly? The answer comes when you read what’s written next. You feel the colour draining from your face and your body begins to tremble, feeling as though you’ve just been dunked into freezing water, headfirst.</p><p>
  <em>“At last, in the salt-soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal and antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness! In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity. Until consciousness failed me.”</em>
</p><p>You swallow; the gulp is thick, sticking to your esophagus on its journey to your belly. Your fingers twitch, making the letter release a crisp rustling sound as a cold sweat breaks out across your crown, making strands of your hair to stubbornly stick to the perspiring skin. In your mind, you picture some unimaginable monstrosity, writhing in the shadows beneath the earth of your family’s mansion, releasing a piercing and unearthly cry as your grandfather flees, leaving the men he hired to whatever horrid fate awaits them.</p><p>
  <em>“You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial. It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows. Alistair awaits your arrival on the family estate, should you choose to accept this godforsaken task I have unjustly handed to you.”</em>
</p><p><em>That</em> name makes you perk up, staring at the piece of parchment, bug-eyed. Alistair? <em>Uncle</em> Alistair? He is still alive and well? You read what remains of your grandfather’s will, equal parts curious and mildly excited. The thought of reuniting with Alistair, who you affectionately called “Uncle Al” when you were younger, is a sorely welcomed boon to your otherwise sour mood.</p><p>
  <em>“I know that I have no right to ask this of you; I do not expect anything to come of this request. But know that no one other than you is capable of undertaking this grandiose assignment; this is, in part, why I have sent you and only you this letter. I know that the fault lies with naught but this old fool and for that, I will accept full responsibility in whatever punishment the gods choose to hand me.”</em>
</p><p>You read the last lines of your grandfather’s testament, lips trembling as your eyes feel hot and wet, but your body is still wrought with the deepest of chills.</p><p>
  <em>“I am sorry. I am sorry for bringing devastation to our family. I hope with every burning fibre of my feeble existence that my mishaps have not yet doomed us all. But if you must know of anything, it is this: I am sorry for burdening you so, my beloved granddaughter. I am sorry for being a selfish simpleton. I am sorry for not staying in contact with you nor your parents for the last decade. I wrote them several times, but they never responded. Perhaps it is not yet too late for you to forgive me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Well, this buffoon’s last thoughts have slogged on enough, I think. I leave this to your discretion, my dearest grandchild. I know that it is a heavy responsibility I have asked you to carry, but carry it you must. For I fear that should you, too, fail, it will be the end of the world as you know it.”</em>
</p><p>The eccentricity of your family’s caretaker only dares to raise its gnarly head the moment you lower your grandfather’s will, setting it aside on the unsealed envelope on the dining table with a shuffle of parchment that’s almost silent. “…Very well. I promise nothing, but I will do what I can to restore honour to the family name. I owe grandfather that much, if nothing else.”</p><p>“Milady…!” The caretaker raises his bald head, his bare scalp shining underneath the dim flicker of lit candles as he stares at you. The look in his eyes is practically <em>feral</em>, ferocious now, but the delight that gleams in his eyes can only be described as pure, unrestrained madness. There are many things about the odd old man you can endure: you can put up with his nervous tics; you can blissfully ignore his mindless spiels of giggles; you can turn a blind eye to his quiet, insane babbling as he talks to himself.</p><p>Strangely, it’s what he says next that both surprises you and grates your nerves, like a hot knife grazes flesh.</p><p>“Lady L/N… You are most kind; truly, your benevolence matches your grandfather’s! The Hamlet will welcome you most heartily. The young heiress, home at last, home at last…” His croon is so grateful, so full of disturbed thanks and at frightening, morbid ease that it makes you want to throw up. His tattered, well-worn robes flutter as he grovels at your feet; the sight unnerves you, seeing no rhyme nor reason for him to prostrate before you. You haven’t been a proper noblewoman for the past ten years, after all. It doesn’t help that he takes one of your hands in both of his, dry and cracked lips kissing the air just above your knuckles.</p><p>It takes about ten minutes worth of back-and-forth before you realize that, much to your dismay, he won’t address you as nothing but “Milady”, “Miss Y/N” or “Lady L/N”. With a heavy heart and an equally cumbersome sigh, you resign yourself to your fate. You have the funniest of feelings that while you feel that the titles of antiquity mean little to you, they will mean even less to the people still living in the Hamlet.</p><p>“Caretaker, in order to cleanse the family’s estate, I will need experienced souls to do so. Do you know if—”</p><p>“Fools and corpses! More misbegotten souls, fodder for the encroaching blackness!” The old madman screeches, appearing to forget himself for a spell. When he takes note of your face, pale in surprise and mouth hanging open, he clears his throat. He speaks after a short pause; thankfully, he’s much calmer now. “I will prepare the stagecoach posthaste, milady. We will leave when you are prepared to depart for the Hamlet.”</p><p>As much as you’d like to stay and have some respite, taking your sweet time to collect yourself and gather your thoughts, you find yourself ignoring your tired muscles, aching for a proper rest. You can’t fathom the thought of napping on your bed, not after reading your grandfather’s will. Why rest when you know sleep will escape you, after all?</p><p>“Yes, please do so. But before I go, I must prepare a notice.”</p><p>As you dip your mother’s quill pen in a small container of ink and as your writing scrawls across the parchment, a thought crosses your mind.</p><p>
  <em> This is for the sake of the family. I am doing the “right” thing, aren’t I? Am I truly ready to die, all for that cold shell I once called “home”? </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Boy, is it <em>hard</em> to make the Ancestor seem almost <em>human</em>.</p><p>I am thinking of shoving poor, hapless souls from the Persona universe into this series, so please look forward to the mayhem!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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